Craft beer comes to Lithuania

I was invited to the Žmogšala beer festival in Vilnius to present
my book on Lithuanian beer, but the flight times meant I had to spend
a long weekend. I decided this was a good time to bring some of my
friends who were curious about Lithuanian beer, so
Knut Albert,
Geir Ove, and brother
in-law Hans Christian joined
me. And since I now know a few people in Vilnius I planned to meet a
few of them as well.

Our first stop was Šnekutis Užupis, logically. We were on our
second pint when in walks Remigijus. He downloaded my book, got to
page 7 where I ask for volunteer translators, and immediately sent me
an email offering his services. He's been amazingly helpful, so some
future blog posts will be based in part on his translations. He kindly
brought three Lithuanian cheeses from a nearby farmer's market. They
tasted very different, but turned out to be the same cheese at three
different stages of aging. As with the beer, this was a Lithuanian
type of cheese.

We moved on to stop number two, Špunka Užupis, just down the road.
It's a lovely, small bar tied to
the Dundulis brewery (about which
more later). The bar has a dedicated following of Lithuanians who know
each other and can always be found deep in conversation over their
beers. It was at about this point that Geir Ove, tasting a new beer,
suddenly said "this one tastes rather Lithuanian." And so it did,
probably from the malts. These flavours are distinctive enough that a
couple of hours is enough to teach a perceptive drinker to recognize
them.

At Špunka Užupis

The following day I'd agreed to do a talk for a group of Swedes
travelling to the Žmogšala festival, organized as a group by Swedish
importer Original Brands STHLM.
They'd gathered some more locals as well, which meant that after the
talk I got to talk to, among others, Simonas Gutautas, who is head
brewer at the aforementioned Dundulis.

It turned out that Simonas is from the farmhouse brewing area in
north Lithuania. His mother used to brew, and she used juniper in her
beer. I thought Latvia was the southernmost limit of juniper use, but
apparently not. Simonas also said that although the commercial
farmhouse ales are rather sweet, the farmhouse homebrewers make more
bitter beers. As an example he cited home brewing legend Julius
Simonaitis, whose brewing was described in the
book that got me interested in farmhouse ale five years ago.

Julius grows his own barley, has his own hop garden, and uses the
village yeast, just like his ancestors. He makes his own malts, and
used enough hops to shock the Danish brewer who visited him. And
unlike most of the farmhouse brews, his beer can be cellared for
months with no ill effects. He's also quite a character. Being famous
for brewing means he often gets offers to sell his beer, but he always
rejects them, saying "I'm not a beermaker (Lithuanian expression), who
sells beer for money, but a brewer." He brews twice a year for
extended family gatherings and also serves the beer to friends and
visitors. Brewing, he says, "is an act of love," not something to be
sold.

Talking with Martynas

I raise the question of perhaps being able to brew together with
him, but Martynas shakes his
head. Julius is getting old and wants to retire from farming. In fact,
he's been trying to sell his farm for a while now. So that's one star
of world brewing culture about to fade.

And it's not the only one. Last year Jonas Morkunas, a commercial
farmhouse brewer, died, which closed his brewery. Others among the
traditional brewers are also getting old, and it's not clear how long
they can carry on. And Martynas tells me the countryside in northern
Lithuania is becoming depeopled. Now that the EU has opened its
borders, most of the young people work elsewhere, leaving only
children and grandparents behind. So this is a beer culture that is
very much in danger.

One thing that's always made Vilnius stand out as a beer
destination is that nearly all of the beer available was Lithuanian
beer. You could find a few imports, but they were exceptions. The
Spunka bars started changing that with a few quality imports from the
UK, Czech Republic and so on. Now a new bar had opened with hundreds
of the same craft beers as everywhere else.

Another new development was that before, the only Lithuanian brewer
doing craft-like things was Dundulis. Then, suddenly, the biggest
industrial brewer, Švyturys, launched a new "craft" portfolio called
Raudonų Plytų, doing IPAs, wits, etc. And now other Lithuanian
breweries have thrown themselves on the bandwagon, making crafty
styles. Which is all natural and reasonable, but there don't seem to
be any new farmhouse breweries.

So it doesn't seem too much of a stretch to fear that before too
long, the Lithuanian beer scene may well look exactly like the one in
Riga or Barcelona.

Anyway, on the Saturday the Žmogšala festival opened and we headed
there. It was held in an old theatre, a nicely elegant setting for a
beer festival. Inside, the hall was backed with benches and people
chatting and lots and lots of tables filled with beer bottles. There
were craft breweries from all over Europe, with good representation
from Estonia and Latvia as well. The Lithuanian farmhouse brewers had
a couple of tables, too, with more traditional Lithuanian beer than
I'd ever seen in one place before, so I got to try a few new ones.

At the festival

The Swedish group I'd spoken to the day before included a
journalist, a blogger, and so on, and these had a small panel up on
the stage discussing Lithuanian beer. It was interesting to hear them
beg the Lithuanians to "don't go modern," "appreciate what you
have," "take care of the traditions," and so on. That part of what
they said was exactly the same as the conclusion to my own talk a few
hours later.

Talking more to Martin from Original Brands I found that they
occasionally import Dundulis beers for events and so on, but the
shelf-life is short, which makes things hard. And to get the real
farmhouse beers into Sweden is even more difficult. Some of them are
raw ales (the wort isn't boiled) so shelf-life is very short indeed.
The farmhouse brewers typically cannot produce very much, either.

We met up with Remigijus again and discovered that he's setting up
his own business exporting various products from Lithuania, including
beer. He told me he's running into exactly the same problems. So it
looks like people wanting Lithuanian beer will have to go there, and
go there soon.

On the first day, at Šnekutis Užupis I gave the barman a copy of my
book, thinking it would be useful for confused tourists wondering what
on earth it was they were drinking. This made him so happy, he
afterwards came over to our table with a 2-litre plastic bottle of
Jovaru Alus, an icon of Lithuanian farmhouse
brewing.

I put it in the fridge in my hotel room and served myself nightcaps
every night, taking three days to finish it, and enjoying every sip.
The beer kept changing, presenting new facets all the time: earthy
oily nuts, wafts of honey and fruit, subtle bitter edges, full soft
body. I felt almost bad drinking it instead of taking it home and
sharing it, but being a raw ale it keeps poorly. It may not last,
either.